Why Performance Information Use Varies Among Public Managers: Testing Manager-Related Explanations

ABSTRACT

This article examines the use of performance information by public managers. It begins with a systematic review of the literature which concludes that we know relatively little about the individual characteristics of managers who report a frequent use of these data. Studies that have focused on people-related explanations have mostly tested socio-demographic variables but have only found inconclusive evidence. This article suggests theorizing more complex individual explanations. Drawing from other fields' middle-range theories, the article speculates about the effects of thus far disregarded manager-related factors. An empirical test based on survey data from German cities reveals the following preliminary findings: performance information use is explained by a high level of data ownership, creative cognitive learning preferences, the absence of cynicism, and a distinct public service motivation. Identity and emotional intelligence were found to be insignificant along with the managers' socio-demographic characteristics.     

Regulating Public Services: How Public Managers Respond to External Performance Assessment

Performance management systems have become a key component of contemporary public administration. However, there has been only limited analysis of the social construction of performance by public managers who are subject to them. This article examines the ways in which public managers create, maintain, and disrupt performance management practices. The authors find that managers make external performance assessments perform for themselves by constantly negotiating boundaries in ways that combine bureaucratic and managerial rationales. The authors argue that the ways in which organizational boundaries are constructed are fundamental to understanding the success or failure of performance management systems and the transformation of managerial ways of thinking about performance into a logic of improvement through which contemporary public sector reforms become embedded.     

公共管理与绩效测评

长期以来,行政部门的工作开展,在很大程度上,由立法和资源分配所推动。行政部门不必非得提供精确的服务,但是履行职责时必须遵守法律, 不得违反投入预算相关条款的规定。直到20世纪 90年代初,新公共管理把行政部门管理的焦点重新引向效果和绩效,开发绩效测评系统,才成为决策机构一项新的需要。     

构建公共政策评估的关键绩效指标体系探析——以X市试行众创空间绩效考评制为例

在企业绩效管理中运用较为成熟的关键绩效指标(KPI)方法,具有战略导向型、动态性、精练性和可操作性等特征,使其成为能够应用到公共政策评估中的可行性方法。以X市试行众创空间绩效考评制为例,阐述公共政策关键绩效指标体系的构建方法,针对公共政策评估实践中KPI方法的不足之处,提出政策评估程序化、多层次有针对性地构建关键绩效指标体系和建立独立的政策评估机构等建议。     

Inside Collaborative Networks: Ten Lessons for Public Managers

This paper offers practical insights for public managers as they work within interorganizational networks. It is based on the author's empirical study of 14 networks involving federal, state, and local government managers working with nongovernmental organizations. The findings suggest that networks are hardly crowding out the role of public agencies; though they are limited in their decision scope, they can add collaborative public value when approaching nettlesome policy and program problems.     

Performance Indicators for Police Oversight Agencies

This study addresses the question of performance indicators for police oversight agencies through a survey of the directors of agencies in Australia and an analysis of annual reports. The findings show that a variety of targets and measures are in place. The majority of oversight bodies adopt fairly basic and largely quantitative measures on matters processed, supplemented by case study accounts of positive impacts.     

The Literary Interview as Public Performance

The interview is a genre “coming of age,” maturing into a serious art form. This essay presents a typology for understanding this growth and how diverse patterns of literary performance have contributed to it. Five types of interviewees are discussed at length: traditionalist, raconteur, advertiser, provocateur, and prevaricator. Some speculations about national and cultural types of interviewees are also broached.     

Synthetic Performance Indicators for Residential Housing Agencies

Many public administrations produce and distribute public services through a number of similar local autonomous organizations, or institutions, operating in different parts of the territory assigned to them under a centralized authority. Examples of this are the public residential housing institutions, the institutions for waste disposal, health care institutions, and education institutions. The problem arises regarding the evaluation of the performance of these local organizations and institutions not in absolute but in relative terms, in order to determine what incentives or sanctions should be meted out to them. This study presents the methodological problems, the data analysis, and the initial results of the method adopted by the Lombardy Region to create a system of performance indicators that will permit an automatic ranking of the Residential Housing Agencies in Lombardy （ALER） according to their performance, based on information from their balance sheets. A performance index was devised by rationally combining the results of three different analyses： position analysis, ranking analysis, and scoring analysis. The results allowed the central administration to： （1） motivate the managers of the local units through a system of performance-based incentives; （2） aggregate poorly performing local units or outsource inefficient functions; and （3） create competition among local units and raise overall performance levels.     

以商谈求共识:行政决策听证中公共意愿的形成

在当前利益主体多元化、利益矛盾加剧的背景下,推进和完善行政决策听证需要解决的一个关键性问题,在于如何协调差异和矛盾,聚集民意,以便为政府决策提供价值前提。协商共识理论为深化行政决策听证的研究提供了新的指向;行政决策听证的功能在于为理性论辩提供建制化空间以集结民意,制约行政决策;在听证议题的形成、听证代表的遴选、话语规范的确立及其制度保障等主要环节中,通过制度程序的建构,排除权力和金钱的侵入,在平等协商对话中整合利益,集结公共意愿。     

Seeking Quality in Training Public Financial Managers: The Place for Certification

The search for quality in public management has been provoked in recent years, mainly by the decline in the public's trust of government and by the growing interest in the development of performance measures. A general assumption that certification of public financial managers will enhance the quality of public management and will thus return public trust in government and the respect for its servants underlies the issues discussed in this article. It focuses on the endeavors to link certification and credentialing of financial managers to broader alternative strategies for assuring quality. The strengths and weaknesses of three major strategies and the available resources for their implementation are discussed: (1) promoting quality within public management education and training; (2) promoting quality within the environment where managers work; and (3) promoting quality of skills held by individual managers themselves.     

Status and Power: The Principal Inputs to Influence for Public Managers

The authors identify status and power as the principal bases of influence for public managers and describe how managers can use this conceptual distinction to increase their influence. Status is defined as the degree to which one is respected by one's colleagues, and power is defined as asymmetric control over valued resources. Different social and relational processes govern (1) how people determine who is, and who ought to be, high status versus powerful and (2) how status and power affect individual psychology and behavior. To illustrate key points, the authors provide examples of individuals from the public sector and public service organizations. The framework of interpersonal influence gives practitioners behavioral strategies for increasing their status and power as well as a way to assess and diagnose interpersonal dimensions of their own performance in their jobs and careers.     

Public Managers as the Missing Variable in Policy Studies: An Empirical Investigation Using Canadian Data

The article draws on survey data from a 2007–09 study of Canadian policy analysts to assess several propositions concerning the role of public managers in policy‐making. It is argued that little is known and much taken for granted concerning the role public managers play in policy making. The discussion begins with a conceptual discussion of the nature of policy advice systems in modern governments and situates public managers among the range of actors who affect different stages of policy making activity. Propositions derived from this conceptual discussion are then subject to empirical analysis using a large‐n 2007–09 Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial dataset.     

Political Ambivalence as Praxis: The Limits of Consensus in Habermas's Theory of the Public Sphere

This paper argues that ambivalence can serve as a proxy for consensus-based debates in public discourse as it allows for individuals to maintain flexible and analytic perspectives on matters that otherwise appear contradictory. In particular, an affirmative understanding of ambivalence will be presented to supplement the highly influential Habermasian approach by drawing from sociological theories of ambivalence found in the work of Simmel, Bauman and Ko?akowski. While the theme of ambivalence is not completely absent from Habermas’s work on the public sphere, it is typically described as a structural consequence of contradiction rather than a form of action that is capable of working with and around inconsistencies in ethics, knowledge and social values. This allows for participation to be sustained through contradiction, rather than being withdrawn in frustration, while also encouraging open-minded judgements capable of avoiding forms of fanaticism.     

Program Strategy and Coalition Building as Facets of New Public Management

This paper explores two issues: first, the strategic and coalition-building tasks that may be routinely associated with New Public Management (NPM); and second, the implications of acknowledging these tasks for the conception of public management. NPM focuses on performance. It invites managers to accept responsibility for whole programs or systems (Kettle, 1997; Dunleavy, 1994; Ridley, 1996; Hood, 1995). This directs attention to basic program frameworks (that is, program strategy), as well as to operations. It involves the purposes of programs. It involves routine attention to such factors as the effectiveness of outcomes, the identification of alternative program configurations, the implications of emerging issues and needs, and the mobilisation of authority for change. In practice, this authority derives both from program stakeholders, as well as from ministers and the broader political system.     

公共管理职业技能的探索性研究

公共管理职业技能的研究是一个十分重要而又紧迫的课题,由于缺乏具有权威性的、有影响的理论,故此我们只能开展以探索为主的研究。以心理测量学的基本原理和方法为指导进行研究设计。在严格的数据获取、统计分析的基础上,进行分析和概括,最后形成了8项公共管理职业的基本能力因素,这一研究结果对我国的公共管理领域的人员培训,特别是政府公务员的选拔、任用,以及中国的MPA项目的发展均会有一定的参考价值。     

简述领导者应对公共危机策略

突发公共事件对经济和社会发展造成的损害越来越严重,能否积极有效应对突发公共事件,领导者的能力及其发挥起着至关重要的作用。领导者应对公共危机的策略是:迅速反应;强化沟通;勇敢负责;做好前期准备。     

A Strategy for Building Public Service Motivation Research Internationally

As public service motivation research grows qualitatively and quantitatively, some scholars question its appropriateness for international applications. This essay sets out a strategy of convergence for international research and measurement approaches. Studies that assess commonalities in public service motivation content internationally are analyzed in order to develop a broader conceptual and more operational definition as well as consequently a more universal public service motivation construct. Public service motives, according to this review, are based on self‐sacrifice and fall into three categories: instrumental, value‐based, and identification. The dimensions of the public service motivation construct are refined along the lines of attraction to public participation, commitment to public values, compassion, and self‐sacrifice. Researchers are urged to include all of its dimensions within their empirical studies to advance contemporary public service motivation studies.     

Stakeholder Red Tape: Comparing Perceptions of Public Managers and Their Private Consultants

Despite the abundance of red tape literature and the growing popularity of outsourcing in the public sector, no study has yet investigated red tape in consulting relationships. Using survey data from public managers and the contractors with whom they work, the authors investigate public managers' and private consultants' perceptions of organizational and contracting red tape. They identify the determinants of red tape perceptions, variation in those perceptions, and the characteristics of respondents with stronger divergent views of contracting red tape. The results indicate that government managers perceive higher levels of organizational red tape and contracting red tape than their consultants. Public managers' perceptions of red tape are associated with job satisfaction and time spent managing and communicating with consultants. Consultants' perceptions of red tape are associated with perceptions of the appropriateness of the government agency's rules, the number of years the firm has worked with the agency, and the percentage of the firm's cost-plus contracts.     

Public Service Professionalism for Performance Measurement and Evaluation

For over fifty years, efforts have been made to measure the results of government activities. Most recently, performance measurement and evaluation have been key components of government reforms in many countries in reaction to loss of confidence in governments and budget stringency. Emphasis is on measuring outcomes or results within a general framework of strategic planning and objective setting, and in a context of devolution, managerial decentralization, and privatization. While it seems reasonable that governments should justify their use of public funds by demonstrating the effectiveness of their programs and activities, performance measurement in practice is by no means straightforward and demands considerable thought in its design and implementation.